Parental care and mating behaviour of polyandrous dunnocks Prunella modularis related to paternity by DNA fingerprinting

Burke, Terry; Davies, N. B.; Bruford, Michael William; Hatchwell, Ben J.

doi:10.1038/338249a0

Cited by 490 publications

(271 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In fact, males (but not females) produced by older mothers were actually less successful, contrary to the predicted relationship (electronic supplementary material, table S4). Although we have no direct data on provisioning of individual offspring in the junco, evidence from other avian species does not support the idea that parents can differentially allocate care within a brood based on offspring paternity [47][48][49][50][51]. However, while we have accounted for some potential sources of maternal or environmental variation, we cannot completely rule out the possibility that females that produce EPO also vary in some way that affects offspring quality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Promiscuous mating produces offspring with higher lifetime fitness

et al. 2011

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In many species, each female pairs with a single male for the purpose of rearing offspring, but may also engage in extra-pair copulations. Despite the prevalence of such promiscuity, whether and how multiple mating benefits females remains an open question. Multiple mating is typically thought to be favoured primarily through indirect benefits (i.e. heritable effects on the fitness of offspring). This prediction has been repeatedly tested in a variety of species, but the evidence has been equivocal, perhaps because such studies have focused on pre-reproductive survival rather than lifetime fitness of offspring. Here, we show that in a songbird, the dark-eyed junco ( Junco hyemalis), both male and female offspring produced by extra-pair fertilizations have higher lifetime reproductive success than do offspring sired within the social pair. Furthermore, adult male offspring sired via extra-pair matings are more likely to sire extrapair offspring (EPO) themselves, suggesting that fitness benefits to males accrue primarily through enhanced mating success. By contrast, female EPO benefited primarily through enhanced fecundity. Our results provide strong support for the hypothesis that the evolution of extra-pair mating by females is favoured by indirect benefits and shows that such benefits accrue much later in the offspring's life than previously documented.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Promiscuous mating produces offspring with higher lifetime fitness

et al. 2011

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“…To test the predictions resulting from their model, we therefore defined cooperative breeding as a breeding system in which at least 10% of young are retained on their natal territory and provide care to siblings. Consequently, polyandrous species (such as the dunnock and Galapagos hawk) or plural breeding systems without natal philopatry (such as that of the greater ani, where direct fitness benefits are thought to play a key role in maintaining cooperative behaviour [23][24][25]) are excluded from our definition of cooperation.…”

Section: Materials and Methods (A) Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex, long life and the evolutionary transition to cooperative breeding in birds

2015

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Long life is a typical feature of individuals living in cooperative societies. One explanation is that group living lowers mortality, which selects for longer life. Alternatively, long life may make the evolution of cooperation more likely by ensuring a long breeding tenure, making helping behaviour and queuing for breeding positions worthwhile. The benefit of queuing will, however, depend on whether individuals gain indirect fitness benefits while helping, which is determined by female promiscuity. Where promiscuity is high and therefore the indirect fitness benefits of helping are low, cooperation can still be favoured by an even longer life span. We present the results of comparative analyses designed to test the likelihood of a causal relationship between longevity and cooperative breeding by reconstructing ancestral states of cooperative breeding across birds, and by examining the effect of female promiscuity on the relationship between these two traits. We found that long life makes the evolution of cooperation more likely and that promiscuous cooperative species are exceptionally long lived. These results make sense of promiscuity in cooperative breeders and clarify the importance of life-history traits in the evolution of cooperative breeding, illustrating that cooperation can evolve via the combination of indirect and direct fitness benefits.

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“…To date, many studies have either ignored the problem of potentially misassigning parentage within cooperatively breeding groups completely, or simply stated that incest does not occur because it has never been observed directly (Lundy et al 1998). Yet, genetic techniques have previously revealed unexpected levels of reproductive success among individuals, and have provided evidence of breeding by individuals assumed to be non-breeders (Burke et al 1989;Gibbs et al 1990;Dixon et al 1994;Allen et al 1995). Incest has been observed directly in a number of avian populations (see above), and been confirmed genetically in one of these populations by multilocus DNA fingerprinting analysis where eggs were marked as they were laid and the mother's identity could be deduced from distinctive egg shell patterns (McRae 1996).…”

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confidence: 99%